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New DataViz Learning Opportunity: Elevate Your DataViz Team
384 Plays3 years ago
On this week's episode, I chat with the four founding members of the new data visualization mentorship community, Elevate Your DataViz.
The post Episode #213: Elevate Your DataViz Team appeared first on PolicyViz.
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Transcript
Introduction to Elevate Your Data Viz
00:00:13
Speaker
Welcome back to the Policy Viz Podcast. I'm your host, John Schwabisch. On this week's episode of the show, I'm very excited to talk with the four founding members of the new data visualization learning community, Elevate Your Data Viz. I've got Duncan Geer, Ali Torben, Will Chase, and Gabrielle Marie joining me on the show. This new learning community is really exciting, I think, because what the four
00:00:38
Speaker
founders have done is created a community where not only can community members get specific pieces of advice and specific training and specific videos and blog posts and all of that, but they get to communicate regularly with the four owners or organizers, I should say, to
00:01:02
Speaker
tell them what they want to learn about. Does the community want to learn about D3? Does it want to learn about Tableau? Does it want to learn about data equity? What do you want to learn about? And then they build the content around that. In addition to having this active community where people are talking to each other,
00:01:19
Speaker
They're sharing their own experiences, they're sharing their own successes and their own failures.
Challenges of Hosting Multiple Guests
00:01:24
Speaker
So it's really exciting part of the data visualization community. And I hope you'll check out their site. I'll help you check out what's going on. But the one thing you should always know when you have five people on a podcast is that sometimes it can be a little difficult to discern names and voices. I think we did a good job here. We were pretty upfront about that at the beginning. You're going to hear me introduce each person as we go through. And you're going to learn a lot, I think, about not just about the elevate
00:01:49
Speaker
platform and community, but you're going to learn a lot about how they think about, the organizers think about teaching data visualization to coming practitioners either very new to the field or even experienced, but want to maybe change their field or change their job or change the type of visualizations that they're creating.
00:02:11
Speaker
So take a listen to this week's episode of the show. A bunch of links are below the episode notes, so you can check those out. I mean, a lot of links. We talked about a lot of stuff, so there's a lot of links down there. So check those out, check out their portfolio, check out the platform and see if you might be a community member that could benefit from learning more about data visualization. So here we go. Here's my conversation with Duncan, Ali, Will, and Gabriela.
Meet the Founders of Elevate
00:02:40
Speaker
Welcome to the podcast. The elevate data is team. I'm going to call you a team. I think I've got, I think, I think four people qualifies as a team. So welcome to the show all. Thanks so much for taking some time out. Thanks, John. Happy to be here.
00:02:55
Speaker
I'm very excited. So for those who are listening, we were talking beforehand. We've got five people on this episode. We're going to be wrangling. We're going to try to get it all so that you can identify who's talking at what time. And of course, there's going to be a lot of links that come out of this conversation. So you should check them out. They'll all be in the notes.
00:03:14
Speaker
So we're gonna start with introductions. So you can, in your mind, as you're listening on your walk or whatever you're doing right now, you can tag names to voices. So we're gonna start with Gabby and yeah, so maybe just a little bit about yourself and we'll just go around the
Origin Story of Elevate Your Data Viz
00:03:31
Speaker
room.
00:03:31
Speaker
Awesome. No pressure. First one. I'm Gabrielle Merit. I'm a freelance information designer and data illustrator, and I help absolutely driven and creative organization share the stories with data. I hope that's short enough.
00:03:48
Speaker
Yeah, that's great. All right. I'm just going to go around my virtual room. So, Will, you're up. Yeah. So, I am Will Chase. I am a visual journalist based in Philadelphia, but I work for Axios, so I work remotely. In the past, I've also worked for companies, worked in academia, and done freelance Data Vis work as well. Great. And Ali?
00:04:15
Speaker
Hi, I am Ali Torbin. I'm an independent information design consultant here in DC. I'm basically John's neighbor. And, um, I do mostly editorial style, I guess would be a good way to describe it, uh, data visualizations and infographics. Great. And last but not least, Duncan.
00:04:34
Speaker
Hi, I'm Duncan Gere. I'm an information designer. I live in Sweden, though, as you can probably hear from my accent, I'm originally British. And yeah, I tend to work with nonprofits. I do a lot of environmental and climate work. I'm also super interested in sonification. I'm one of the co-hosts of the Loud Numbers podcast with Miriam Quick. And yeah, I'm going to be the only one of us to introduce themselves with. I'm also one of the co-founders of the Elevate Learning Community.
00:05:02
Speaker
You will want that one, didn't you? They passed right by it. They just passed right by it. Totally forgot about it. Just totally missed that. I figured that was sort of a given that, you know, like you're on the Elevated Data Vis Learning Community podcast. So, you know, we're not just inviting randos on here. No. Well, I mean, sometimes it feels that way a little bit, but not this time. Okay. So I'm really excited to talk to you all about the new Data Vis Learning community you all pulled together.
Mission and Vision of Elevate
00:05:30
Speaker
and so I thought we could start with maybe Duncan talking about what it is for people who may not know and then talking about how did the whole thing come together because like I'm kind of think it's a miracle that we were able to get the five of us on a call like I feel like that's as much a miracle but getting four people to pull together an entire like
00:05:52
Speaker
you know, platform of teaching people about data visualization is itself kind of a miracle. So Duncan, maybe you could just give that short introduction to what it is and then how it came together. Sure. So Elevate is a learning community, as I said. We're providing a space, a kind of safe space for people to get together and boost their skills in kind of creative data viz and information design. Does that make sense? Is that pretty clear?
00:06:20
Speaker
Yeah, maybe and then maybe just so people know, it's not just like a website you go to. And like, there's a list of resources and like video tutorials. I mean, there's a whole ecosystem around it. So maybe you could talk a little bit about, you know, all that stuff. And I know we'll come back to it. I'm sure over the course of the conversation, but
00:06:37
Speaker
So we provide a website with like a bunch of blog posts that we post to once a week. We also provide a community which is based currently around Slack where you can kind of chat about things. We have like a weekly question and we have like a little wins channel where you can share whether you've done something. And then we have like a, you know, I need feedback on this kind of thing channel.
00:06:58
Speaker
We also have a knowledge base where we're trying to compile all of our community's knowledge together into sort of one easy to browse unit. What else do we have? We have regular office hours where people can come with their problems and chat to us. We do live streams. We do heaps of stuff.
00:07:16
Speaker
Yeah, it's pretty long list. Yeah. And I guess it's it's beneficial, you kind of cover a lot of different time zones. So I mean, yeah, so we've got like, Gabby, you're on the west coast, will an alien east coast, Duncan, you're in Sweden. So are you all sort of like, have you carved out time, like specific time, just make sure you're kind of like watching the slack thing over here? Or is it just like, whoever's sort of around at that time?
00:07:41
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, one of the great things is that we do have members from all around the world. And that's been something that we've been really, really happy about. And yeah, it's, you know, it's, it's, people are generally pretty, they're willing to wait a couple of hours or something for a reply. It's not too much of a problem. You know, we don't have it like perfectly synchronous. And you know, when we do like a live stream or something, there's always a recording available for people who can't make it live. So yeah, the timezone thing works, but it definitely helps that we are spread around the globe a little bit. Yeah, absolutely.
00:08:11
Speaker
All right, so tell us how this thing came about.
Structured Learning and Guidance
00:08:14
Speaker
Were you just sitting at home one day and you're like, I have this, a great idea. Talk to my friends. So this came out of a couple of years ago, I read this article. It was called something like the keyboard CEO manifesto. I can give you a link for your show notes.
00:08:30
Speaker
And it was kind of explaining how to be like a solo business person, like a company of one. And one of its key recommendations and it's really, really good advice was not to spend all of your time looking at the superstars, right? The people who are much further on in their career than you and feeling like you suck by comparison to them. And instead try to kind of form a small group of folks at a similar stage in the journey to you.
00:08:53
Speaker
So I looked around and I kind of identified a group of people that I thought were doing kind of similar work to me and I messaged them kind of just sort of out the blue really and asked if they wanted to kind of do sort of an occasional group call or something just to kind of compare notes.
00:09:10
Speaker
Um, this was sort of right at the start of the pandemic and lockdown. And so I think nobody was tired of zoom at this point. So it was a good time to be sending that message. And, but yeah, to my surprise, they all said yes. And, and that group immediately became for me, at least one of the most important things that I've done in my career to date, like I cannot.
00:09:30
Speaker
overstate how incredibly valuable this thing has become, having this little kind of trusted council of advisors to help me like work through problems and help other people through their problems in turn. But then during all of this, I kind of realized that all of us were writing blog posts and newsletters and sort of, you know, hosting podcasts in the case of Allie and informally kind of like mentoring people in the subject of kind of how to build a career out of creative database freelancing or information design.
00:10:00
Speaker
And also that this is something that we all loved to do and wanted to do more of, but we also needed to pay the bills. And, you know, doing that kind of stuff doesn't normally pay the bills. So I kind of started thinking about how we could join forces and create something that would be valuable for people while still being kind of financially viable for us to spend time on. And so I pitched this kind of like super vague idea. I think I had this crazy metaphor about light and fire.
00:10:33
Speaker
And then to my even greater surprise, they all said yes again. And yeah, here we are today. And I kind of want to note as well that Jane Zhang, who was part of our kind of like larger group, was also a big part of the development of this
00:10:47
Speaker
program as well. And she decided to opt out before we launched because she pivoted her career away from Data Vis. And you might have read her excellent article about that. But yeah, Jane was really instrumental in the early days of setting it up and really helped us clarify a few things. So I wanted to give a little shout out to Jane and the other people who are part of this little wider group who we owe a huge debt of gratitude to. That's great. So I want to come back to one aspect of the origin story about you
00:11:16
Speaker
seem like you built your own little community of four people before sort of building this broader platform. And so I wanna come back to that and sort of maybe what the lessons learned were over those like six, 12 months or so, and how maybe that was incorporated. But before we get into that, because I have a lot of questions. So before I get into that, I wanna talk about one of the interesting things I've noticed
00:11:39
Speaker
in the community is that it's not just focused on how to learn how to build something in tool XYZ or what should your invoice look like. There's a whole section that I was looking through on process. There's this really cool piece I thought that was basically how to collect images, build your digital mood board,
00:12:01
Speaker
get those into like this tool or that tool. I think maybe Pinterest was one of them and then pull it into Figma and then align it. So it was not just like get inspired. It was like really practical process. And so, Gabby, I wanted to ask you to talk maybe a little bit about the process part, but just how that sort of all fits within the broader community.
Teaching Tools and Skill Development
00:12:23
Speaker
Yeah, so we all do create like tutorials on like softwares, but we know and acknowledge the fact that there are better tutorials probably out there already. Like we all have access to all those courses and free YouTube videos. And so we wanted to
00:12:38
Speaker
offer something different to the community. We really wanted to give process, like you say, practical advice and recommendation that people can apply to questions that maybe sometimes are not covered. So the one you're talking about is called the Find Your Style Challenge.
00:12:55
Speaker
And it was made in four weeks. And each step is different. It's kind of like breaking it down baby step. Instead of telling people you have to find your style, look for inspiration and there you go. We wanted to give really, really exact advice on like step by step. Here's where you collect images because people don't know to start with. Like here's a list of all the websites you can use. What type of inspiration you're looking for. How many do you need to get?
00:13:18
Speaker
So the idea really for those challenges and we do, so this is a find your style challenge process. There's some database challenge that we've done and also coming up soon. But the idea is really to break it down into micro step to help people, you know, really take the time to do it and the on their own time. There's no, obviously there's no like time pressure here, but we've realized in our private community between us that when we have those big goals that are a bit abstract, like make a portfolio website.
00:13:46
Speaker
You know, it's just impossible. Like first, you know, it's scary to start with. And also like, where do you start? Do you first do your own, you know, do you first do your own content? Do you start with choosing the website template? Which website template do you use? WordPress, Squarespace. So we really want to break down all those processes. We want to talk about the things that nobody talks about.
00:14:07
Speaker
So whether it's client work, I'm like, okay, so here's a contract, but how do you use it? What do you pay attention to? We really want to break it down to my core information that people are, you know, the people need and never get. So, you know, even recently, Duncan and Ali have a stereo on like the process of quitting a data resolution for the press. So how do you pitch it? And Duncan is sharing like his email.
00:14:30
Speaker
Like what email did he wrote? He sent like the whole template. And that's the kind of thing that you don't, sometimes I would give you like vague advice on like, this is how you're presenting. You talk about, you know, what's cool about the art, what's relevant, but really having like a template with sentences that's pre-written for you, I think is like what we were missing and what we give each other in our private community, in our private site. That's what we realized what helpful is sometimes I'm going to ask like, can somebody write for me an email to tell my client, like push back on something?
00:14:58
Speaker
And how do I actually formulate that? So that's the idea of this process is just breaking down and giving people way more practical information.
00:15:07
Speaker
Yeah, but it taps into a real thing,
Exploring Diverse Tools in Data Viz
00:15:09
Speaker
right? Which is like, I think we all sort of forget that we don't all know every tool and just like, even though Pinterest, for example, might just be sort of a simple like, put this in your thing. Like, not everybody knows that. Not everybody knows there's like a Chrome extension where you can like, like, yeah, I mean, all those little things are super helpful just to like, as I think Duncan, you mentioned earlier, like reduce the amount of time that you're doing on these sort of smaller things and just get to
00:15:37
Speaker
the what I think most of us would say is the fun stuff, which is actually like creation part. Cool. Alright, so now process is obviously a big part. And we'll come back to that. But part of the process is learning how to actually build something. And my guess is, and correct me if I'm wrong, but my guess is a lot of people in the community want to learn like, how do I actually make a thing? I've got the data, but how do I actually make a thing? And Gabby, as you mentioned, there's a million tutorials out there. But like,
00:16:04
Speaker
you watch the YouTube thing and if there's a step missing or like your computer does something like you're kind of stuck. So I wanted to ask Will about sort of tools generally, but also specifically about D3 because I noticed, I think it was the most recent newsletter you all sent out. There was like a whole section on questions about D3.
00:16:27
Speaker
So it's sort of a two-part question, like tools in general, but also like specifically to D3, like what are you seeing from members of the community? Is that their focal point at this point? Or is it just like there was just kind of like a spike in interest in that and you anticipate it sort of broadening out?
00:16:45
Speaker
Mm hmm. Yeah. So I think there's like several parts. It's like a two part question. And I'll probably give like a 10 part answer or something. So I think in terms of like focusing on tools or like what sort of stuff do we do around tools, that's definitely a major, you know, major part of like the content we make. But I think like Gabby touched on, we really try to focus on niches or areas where you can't find good resources elsewhere.
00:17:15
Speaker
So, you know, like recently, Ali and Gabby made a tutorial on like how to add textures to your charts using Procreate and Figma and Photoshop. Because that's something like if you go search for that on the internet, it's not easy to find that in like a database context.
00:17:34
Speaker
So we do have a lot of tutorials that are focused on stuff you wouldn't find elsewhere. Now, in terms of the D3 stuff, I think what happened was we had a lot of new members come in, and we had a big influx of people saying, hey, this is my name, and I live here. And right now, I want to learn D3. That's the next step. But as Gabby mentioned earlier as well,
00:18:03
Speaker
There's people out there that make way better D3 tutorials than we could ever make, and there's dozens of them. If somebody asked me to teach them D3, I would be like, okay, great, give me $200, and then I will give you $100 back to spend on Amelia Wattenberger's book, and then I'll pocket the rest.
00:18:25
Speaker
But the tricky part is when you tell somebody, oh, there's lots of tutorials, go find them. It's not that easy. And especially for something like D3, what we realized is that it's really a huge base of knowledge that you need to even get to that point. And that's the case with a lot of tools.
00:18:45
Speaker
And all of our members are coming in with really different experience levels. They're starting at different places. They have different goals. Why do they want to learn D3? Do they want to be like a master engineer or do they just want to dabble a little bit? And so we came up with the idea to basically say, OK, we're not going to make a whole D3 course.
00:19:04
Speaker
But what we will do is make a learning pathway sort of thing where we figure out, OK, where you're starting, what is your base of knowledge that you're coming in with? And then based on that, here's a whole set of tutorials. Here's what you need to learn. OK, step one, learn HTML and CSS. Here's our recommended tutorials to do that. Step two, learn JavaScript. Here's the courses we recommend for that, and so on.
00:19:31
Speaker
And I think it's a really good example of how we can respond basically to what our members are asking for. Because that's one of my favorite things about this is that we can be really responsive. So if we see a huge influx of people saying, I need to learn D3, we can be like, OK, great. We're going to make some content for that.
00:19:48
Speaker
Um, and yeah, part of that newsletter was saying, you know, this is something we're working on. And what else do you want to see? Because I think this is a concept that's really applicable. So, you know, people come into data viz with completely different, like some people are engineers and they need to learn design. Some people are designers and they need to learn engineering.
00:20:06
Speaker
So I think this is a concept we hope to extend. We can have a learning pathway on D3, on visual design, Tableau, storytelling, whatever it is. And so we're asking our members, what do you want? What do you need? And then responding to that.
00:20:24
Speaker
I wonder how many people who said I want to learn D3. And then you're like, OK, here's what you need to learn on HTML. And here's what you need to learn on CSS. And here's what you learn on JavaScript. And then we'll get to the D3. How many of them are like, forget it. I'll just I'm going to Google Sheets. Forget it. I'm not going to dive into that. Yeah. Yeah. Most people don't need D3 to do what they want to do. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't wonder how many people sort of think I need D3. And then they're like, well, maybe I just need like a lot. A lot. Yeah. I think it's huge.
00:20:54
Speaker
It's a huge thing. I mean, in fact, one of the first articles I wrote for the community was called Do I Need to Learn D3? Because I was like, you know, we're seeing like everyone comes in and I think there's this huge sort of like, I don't know where it comes from exactly. But there's like this sort of, you know, D3 lobby that like gets it in everybody's head that as soon as they join database, that's like the pinnacle, they have to learn D3. And, you know, one of the messages I was giving people is like, honestly, if you're thinking of like,
00:21:21
Speaker
time input, like input and reward, you're going to get out of that. D3 is not what I would recommend learning. It's a massive, massive time sink, years of investment if you're not already familiar with these knowledge base. And you're going to get a useful skill out of it. But in that same amount of time, you could develop so many other useful skills and skills that are used far more often than D3 is, in fact.
00:21:48
Speaker
Yeah. So before I ask my next question, so when we started, you all mentioned you sort of have different, it's interesting, you all have sort of different places that you sort of.
00:21:57
Speaker
live kind of in the data vis world, right? So, you know, Ali is kind of more on that infographic illustration side and Will, you're in sort of like the news side. So I'm just curious, maybe we'll go around the room, like, what is your primary slash preferred? I hesitate to say that because sometimes we have our tools that we don't like, but we have to use them. But like, what is your primary tool that you use in your day to day? So maybe we'll just like, so Will, we'll start with you.
00:22:26
Speaker
Yeah, so I mean, I use a huge variety of tools. I think visual journalism is one where you use, you know, perhaps like, I don't know, so many, but a lot of my work is design focused and storytelling. So, you know, to be honest, if I think of like the percentage of my time that is spent in a tool,
00:22:47
Speaker
The majority is probably something like Figma is probably my number one for doing design and concept work. And then I also spend a lot of time just researching things. Taking notes, I use Notion for note taking. Pen and paper for just kind of sketching out ideas, making outlines of stories. And I mean, well, obviously the number one tool is Google for any data journalist.
00:23:14
Speaker
Um, yeah, but for, for actually making the charts, uh, data wrapper, we make tons and tons and tons of charts with data wrapper. That's our bread and butter tool. Um, illustrator from making more complex charts. And then yes, of course, uh, D three occasionally. Um, but these days if I'm coding, it's really going to be svelte, uh, with like a little bit of D three sprinkled in. Yeah. Okay. Um, Gabby, what's your primary slash preferred?
00:23:44
Speaker
I am a Adobe girl. My work is mainly Illustrator and heavy Photoshop because I do a lot of kind of data illustrations. And then, you know, for the data part, I kind of use Excel a little bit.
00:24:01
Speaker
who does not have a problem with that. So no judgment. Yeah, it works for me. No cutting and I actually been using a lot of Figma for because I do a lot of web design, really big UX UI heavy website with the dev visualization. So Figma is has been incredible for that. So quite a bit of Figma too.
00:24:21
Speaker
So then, just quickly, this is really just for me rather than listeners, although they might be interested. So the Figma Adobe or Illustrator split. So are you using Figma more for wireframing for websites and then Illustrator for more of the more detailed design piece?
00:24:39
Speaker
Yes. So Figma is a tool. And again, you can use it almost like a trader for really basic stuff. But when it comes to doing custom design, like really specific shapes and type of thing illustrator is you like, that's just the way to be honest. That's still the place to go.
00:24:54
Speaker
I personally feel strongly about it. I cannot have another opinion on it. But I just think I illustrate the thing with Figma is it's really user friendly. So I always recommend that if you're starting with a vector based software, just go with Figma. It's free. It's really easy. It's just limited in time of custom vector
00:25:12
Speaker
The shape type of thing and effect is getting there though. But the really, to me, the main function of Figma, where it's so powerful is the UX UI with the components and responsive prototypes. So I can quite literally make a website that looks like a functioning website with button hover effects, animation, transition. It's such a powerful, and I build like an entire design system with data visualization, with responsiveness in Figma. And there's nothing that, and sorry, Adobe, but xData does not come.
00:25:49
Speaker
I mean, I use Figma for everything, and that's mostly because it works the way I expect it to, whereas Illustrator just does not. Yeah, I mean, I use Figma for everything, and that's mostly because it works the way I expect it to, whereas Illustrator just does not.
00:26:00
Speaker
I use Illustrator sometimes, but it's only ever really when I'm working with someone else who doesn't know Figma and I have to give them an Illustrator file. Otherwise, they'll just not be able to do anything with it. The other situation is when I'm doing stuff for print.
00:26:18
Speaker
because Figma doesn't do print. And that is a thing that I come up against sometimes. So I guess that's my kind of illustrator versus Figma opinion. I think that's great. But yeah, I mean, Figma kind of sits in my pipeline pretty close to the end. Like the start is,
00:26:36
Speaker
Yeah, it's Google sheets almost always. I almost never use Excel and pen and paper after that to kind of like sketch things out. And yeah, and then in between it's usually flourish, sometimes raw graphs to kind of like make the charts. Or if I'm doing something spatial, it'll be map shaper. I love map shaper and map box. Yeah. VS code. If I'm doing stuff with code.
00:27:02
Speaker
That's pretty much how I run things. And what I really like about this question, I'm really glad you asked this because it really shows how, I don't know, one of the big benefits of I think our membership is that you get four different perspectives on everything. It's not one answer, you're getting four answers.
00:27:18
Speaker
And it kind of shows that you can kind of build a career in this, like we're doing it in four different ways. You can do it in your own way. Like there are certain commonalities and useful things, but like exactly which tools you use, everybody uses different tools and everybody is making a success of it. So like you don't have to kind of copy people's tool list or whatever, or learn whatever the cool tool is. Just like use what you're good at and you'll make good stuff with it.
00:27:42
Speaker
but each of the three of you, and we're gonna come to Ali in a second, Ali's gonna pull it all together, but the other point that the three of you have made is that there isn't just one tool in the process, and I feel like a lot of people forget about that, or when they're like, hey, I'm a Tableau user, I'm not picking on Tableau, I'm just saying, I'm a Tableau user,
00:28:03
Speaker
they don't always talk about the three other tools that they use to maybe collect the data and analyze the data or clean the data. And then maybe they're doing other things after they're working in Tableau. And two, I think Gabby's point from earlier about like being detailed about each of these sort of little things that add up to the whole. I think a lot of people sort of forget that, especially if you're just, as you all mentioned, sort of coming fresh to this.
00:28:30
Speaker
Okay, so Ali, I'm gonna ask you the same question on tools and then I'm gonna ask you a follow-up question, but let's start with like, what's your tool kit like? Yeah, I love Tableau. I use Tableau a lot. Figma, rawgrass.io to do charts, and Illustrator and Procreate with my iPad are kind of my big ones. And you're right, just jumping from one
00:28:55
Speaker
In one project, I will do sketches and storyboard stuff in Procreate, and then I'll do some charts in Tableau, and then I'll export it as a PDF, bring it into Illustrator, so it's a vector, and then maybe overlay a texture that I made in Procreate. There's three different tools right there, four.
00:29:19
Speaker
for tools and to the point like Procreate as you mentioned is a tablet app, right? So like it's not just like for tools on a desktop. It's like two totally different machines.
00:29:30
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And going back and forth between different, different, uh, softwares and, um, technologies. It is a lot. And that's a great part about showing, um, showing people kind of like looking over our shoulder. They can see that it's a huge process and it's not just a, oh, just once you know how to use Tableau, you're good. You know, you can see, you know, from beginning to end what the whole thing looks like.
00:29:54
Speaker
Yeah, so to that point, maybe I asked these questions out of order. So we started with Gabby on sort of like setting up your process and your inspiration. And we kind of skipped to the end with Will, unlike the Dataviz tool, but I wanted to back up just a little bit. Are you all doing or planning on doing tutorials, lessons, similar sort of thing for the data collection cleaning analysis part of this whole thing? Because like, this is like the thing that I feel like we often miss in the Dataviz discussion is on like the data part, which is so central to everything.
00:30:24
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. We are, like everybody else has said, super reactive to what people want. And so far there hasn't been a lot of questions about the data and analysis part. It might be just the kinds of people who are in right now, because it seems like a lot of people, the thing that we
00:30:43
Speaker
kind of is the highlight of the community. Our community is showing creative ways of designing. So I think that attracted a lot of people who were more in the data part and wanted to hone the creative skills.
00:30:58
Speaker
But of course, yeah, that is a huge, huge aspect of data visualization. So we're kind of, um, as we run into things in our personal practice, we post about it and then are reactive to other people's, um, questions like Duncan just so obsessed with the V look up in Excel. And so.
00:31:15
Speaker
He was like, I have to write an article about the life changing magic of VLOOKUP because it saves me so much time when I'm cleaning data and analyzing data. So he did a video on that. So useful. I learned a lot. And then I think Gabby mentioned how Duncan and I are live streaming our process of
00:31:31
Speaker
pitching a data story. So we are actually showing us kind of like looking at the data we have and being like, I want to show this, but I don't have the information. Let's look in this research article and see what data we can get from here. Okay. Well, that idea is dead now because we don't have the data. Okay. What do I have to do to, to, to pivot this data set? So it works for our visualization. So you can see us working through these problems live. So, um, that is definitely something that we are focused on, but we're more reactive to what people want.
00:32:01
Speaker
So two things on that, uh, Duncan, I don't want to blow your mind anymore, but like now you need to go to X look up. Um, that will, that will totally change your life. Uh, if you go to X look up, but that's a whole other thing. Oh, X lookups, like the new, it's V look up on steroids because it combines index and match in a lookup. It's fantastic. I was going to say I'm all about index match these days. I've moved on my VLOOKUP days.
00:32:25
Speaker
I will say it's a fun, it's the, it's one of the rare fun parts of the Excel community is like, are you an index match person or you'd be look up person. So, um, but I will say on this process live stream, you know, I've started like a little tableau playlist on my YouTube channel, just like me, like struggling with it. And.
00:32:44
Speaker
It has gotten a really good response, and I think because people who are either already very experienced with Tableau or even developing Tableau forget about the early struggles that we all have with these tools. It's like, where is this menu? I think Duncan, you said Figma is really intuitive for you.
00:33:03
Speaker
I think we kind of forget as we get used to tools, like some things are not intuitive for the early user. So I think that showing people that struggle and that I don't want to call it failure, but to your point, Ali, like, yeah, this data is like doesn't exist or doesn't work or whatever. Like, yeah, that's a struggle that we all have. And I think we see like shiny things on the on the internet. We're like, oh, this is easy. But like,
00:33:25
Speaker
Yeah, you see somebody post like, Will will post something on Axios and you're like, whoa, how did he get that? How did he do that? And then of course, he doesn't tell you about the stories that got, all his stories that got killed. Right. Right. And then he needed to lean on someone else in Axios to make the little illustration of the little piece of bacon or whatever it was in that one that I'll find. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
00:33:46
Speaker
So, Ali, you mentioned that so far there hasn't been a ton of questions on the data analysis part. You've all mentioned that D3 seemed to be a bigger area of challenge. So what are some other things that people have been asking about that you all are obviously working on now, but you expect to be those things that you can address?
00:34:08
Speaker
Yeah. And I should say the way that we find out what people want is that we have surveys and people ask questions in Slack and we have office hours every week. And that's a lot of where we get our ideas for our next article. Like someone will say, I'm having trouble doing this. And we're like, you know, people, other people are probably having.
00:34:25
Speaker
trouble doing this too. So we get a lot of our ideas from people who come to office hours. So that's a really great source. A lot of it is wanting to know the process from beginning to end. And having four practicing Data Vis designers at your disposal is super valuable. And
00:34:45
Speaker
being able to share our experience has been really helpful to our members. The process from beginning to end is something that people ask a lot about. Where to even start with freelancing? Because some people in the membership are already freelancing, so they're really like being able to talk to other freelancers so it's not so lonely.
00:35:05
Speaker
Um, but some people want to make the jump soon. So me being a career switcher, um, and jumping into freelance, I can give them like, Hey, I literally just did this. This is what I did. This is what I would do over. Um, and then some people just kind of want to peek behind the curtain and be like, I might want to do this in like two years. Kind of what, what's the process like? So, uh, Duncan and Gabby just recently posted, um, articles about just like breaking down their finances and giving real numbers, which is, you know, huge.
00:35:35
Speaker
Just in the world in general. Real numbers, what their expenses are, where their clients came from. Will and I are up next to share our stuff and I think mine will be interesting for some people who want to jump careers because last year
00:35:50
Speaker
I went from a salary job to freelance, so you can kind of see how I did that transition. So just the kind of the ins and outs of freelancing. There's a lot of people who are curious about that. And then also just experiments. People are really interested in kind of the new things that we're doing. Like Duncan is really on the cutting edge of sonification.
00:36:10
Speaker
And I have actually been really surprised. A lot of people are interested in sonification that are coming into the membership. They're just like, I'm really into music. I'm into data. Like, let's put them together. And Duncan's giving them feedback. You all thought it was just like this weird thing that I did and no one else did, but it's dozens of us.
00:36:30
Speaker
And I'm doing a lot of experiments like with 3D and visual metaphor and Gabby and Will are doing a lot of experiments too. And it's a lot of data journalism too. We've noticed a lot of people are into data journalism. So Will's going to do a challenge about a data story. Like how, you know, like before you even open up a software, like what's the process of finding a data story? You know, like that's something, another thing not a lot of people are talking about. So it's a lot of like.
00:36:56
Speaker
the intangibles. You can't find a YouTube video immediately on these different topics. Those are the things that people have been coming to us for. Interesting. On the freelancing side, Duncan, I want to turn to you on this one.
Training Future Competitors
00:37:13
Speaker
On the freelancing side, when you all first announced this project, I saw a bunch of people say,
00:37:19
Speaker
aren't you just helping people who are going to be your competitors i mean not will so much because you know he's he's he's got the axios machinery behind him but no just kidding um what's your response to that i don't think it's a critique i think it's just like a question but like what is your response to that question like aren't you just training your competitors
00:37:38
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think this is a totally reasonable question. I mean, what I replied at the time was a rising tide lifts all boats. And that was perhaps a little bit cryptic. So let me try and unpack that a little bit so that it's clear what I mean. So I'm an environmental scientist by education. That's the background that I come from. So I come at this from kind of an ecosystem perspective. And I think that right now, one of the biggest problems faced by creative database experts, us and our members,
00:38:07
Speaker
is that most people who could use our help don't even know that database or information design or whatever is a thing, right? They've not heard of it. And so instead they look for designers or UX people or data analysts or whatever. And those people, you know, they might be experts in their part of the puzzle, but they don't necessarily have the whole package of skills.
00:38:29
Speaker
that are crucial to kind of crafting the best possible work, right? And that includes graphic design and UX and data analysis, but it also involves storytelling, experience with accessibility, coding skills in some cases, maybe a degree of artistic flair, if that's something that you can call a skill, and much more beyond that. So how do we change that, right?
00:38:52
Speaker
One way that we can do that is by raising the profile of Dataviz as a field, right? So more people know that it's a thing and that there are people who specialize in it. Um, or if they do know about it, maybe we want them to understand better how incredibly valuable it can be to an organization and that it's worth paying for an expert rather than just getting your in-house graphic designer to have a go. Right. Right.
00:39:15
Speaker
And so then we ask, how do we do that? And one good way is to have as many people as possible making really good work and proudly talking about it and labeling it as database and publishing books full of beautiful database works and things. And that's where we come in. We think that the best way to get that to happen is to provide a safe place where people can get together to learn and experiment and to elevate their skills, basically.
00:39:43
Speaker
So to kind of sum all that up, I guess we kind of think that expanding the market is a much more useful thing to be doing than fighting over scraps. And I think you can kind of see that in the fact that we offer unemployed folks and students and people in lower income countries a 50% discount on the cost of the membership.
00:40:02
Speaker
And, you know, we love, we really genuinely love sharing our knowledge and our skills and our experience. And we love to see our members succeed. And we very much think that more people doing great work means that everybody has an easier time. It's a kind of a vibrant ecosystem is a much better, a much healthier place to be than a collection of like tall poppies or whatever. Yeah, that's kind of our philosophy behind the whole thing.
00:40:23
Speaker
Yeah, that's great.
Joining the Community
00:40:25
Speaker
So I want to just wrap us up. Maybe I'll give. Well, I'm trying to think if we should go around the room one more time. But I wanted to ask Ali just one more time, like, where should people go to find you all? What's the best way to sign up? What is the sign up process? I'm guessing it's pretty easy sign up process, because it just signs up. But like, yeah, where should people look for you all?
00:40:47
Speaker
Yeah, go to elevatedataviz.com and you can see, you can read all about the program. We have testimonials there, what we offer, and then there's a button up at the top that you can click on that says, join now. And then it'll just take you to the page where you just type in your email address and, uh,
00:41:06
Speaker
and then put your payment in. Like Duncan said, we have a regular payment and then we have half off for people who are unemployed or from different countries. We don't ask you to provide any proof or anything. If you feel like you're qualified, just do it. We want you to take advantage of it if you need it. That's what it's there for.
00:41:31
Speaker
Um, and yet you'll get a welcome email on where to start and showing you around the, uh, the program. And then you can join the Slack and introduce yourself and you'll get a very, very warm welcome. And, uh, yeah, we hope to see, see you in there. That's great. That's great. And also, if anyone has any questions and like, just wants to ask something, you can email us at any time. Um, what, what is the email address? It's hello at elevate dataviz.com. Right. I think that's it.
00:41:59
Speaker
Yes. Should I re-record that? I don't know. He wanted a call back. Hello at ElevateDatingWith.com. That's right. No, he took care of it at the beginning where he introduced he was part of the co-founder, but then didn't have all the contact information. This is great. Gabby, Will, Allie, Duncan, thanks so much for coming on the show. Congrats on this. It's really exciting. Thanks again for coming on the show. Thank you so much, Sean. Thank you, Joe. Yeah, thank you so much.
00:42:28
Speaker
Thanks everyone for tuning into this week's episode of the podcast. Before I let you go, just a couple of quick things about some changes that I'm building into the support for the site. So for a long time, I've had Patreon going, which is an opportunity for you to financially support the show. I'm gonna collapse the Patreon down to just one platform, just one tier, if you want to join that way. I'm also going to add a paid version of my newsletter,
00:42:57
Speaker
The paid version of the newsletter is going to have more behind the scenes action. I'm going to give you sneak peeks at many of the YouTube videos. You'll receive the link to the unlisted video before it goes live. I'm also going to start biweekly, every other week, our Zoom sessions so that you can ask me questions, you could come in, I'm going to have some of the
00:43:17
Speaker
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00:43:38
Speaker
All of this is to support the show, to support the audio editing and the transcription and the web support that's needed. If you'd like to do so, head over to one of those links there in the show notes below, head over to Patreon, head over to the newsletter or head over to Winno, which is a new app I'm using that will be using text messaging. So check all those out if you'd like to support the show.
00:43:59
Speaker
But of course, the best thing you can do to support the show is keep listening, keep downloading and letting other folks know about it. So until next time, this has been the policy of his podcast. Thanks so much for listening.
00:44:10
Speaker
A number of people help bring you the Policyviz podcast. Music is provided by the NRIs, audio editing is provided by Ken Skaggs, design and promotion is created with assistance from Sharon Satsuki-Ramirez, and each episode is transcribed by Jenny Transcription Services. If you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it and review it on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:44:32
Speaker
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